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“If you were born without wings, do nothing to prevent them from growing.” - Coco Chanel
*
It’s raining when they meet.
Or - it’s not raining. The sky is open, the sidewalks are flooded, and people are sodden and miserable. Kurt has given up on his umbrella and has pulled his coat tight around him, the thick coif of his hair now dripping hairspray into his eyes and down his face, and he thinks he’s discovered a previously unrecorded level of bone deep misery as he pushes wet hair from his face and tries to ignore the wet that trickles down his spine to soak the fabric of his underwear. Rain, they’d said. He’d take rain over this unholy deluge every damn time. This isn’t rain. It’s Armageddon. They’re all going to die. Manhattan may actually wash out to sea. He pulls open the door to the college library and slips inside, mostly - if not exclusively - to escape the rain.
He doesn’t even realise he’s spoken aloud until a rich laugh makes him glance around, his eyes settling finally on a man shaking rain water from the feathers of his wings. He seems equally bedraggled, although his hair is at least still perfect, or is from a distance. His wings, though, are full of separated, misaligned feathers, the rain drenching every layer and dripping to the floor as he spreads and flaps them once, gently. Kurt knows he’s staring, can see the man gazing back at him, and he feels the blush that creeps into his cheeks, tomato red in his pale skin. He’s never seen wings up close, though, although he’s seen the documentaries and read the books. Seeing them in the flesh -
He tears his gaze away, focusses on removing his coat and unsticking his shirt from his skin, tries to pretend he doesn’t hear the rustle of feathers as they settle back into place. “I’m sorry,” the voice says, louder than it should be from across the foyer. Kurt stays silent for a moment, and turns his head to say it’s fine, he just didn’t realise he’d been speaking, but the winged man is standing little more than two paces from him now. His brown eyes are sincere, his smile quick but fleeting, and he says again, “I’m sorry. You reminded me of my mom. She always said that about the rain. ‘If this gets any heavier, the whole house will float away.’ It was inappropriate of me to laugh.”
Kurt can feel the smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “My mom was the same,” he says. He smoothes his pants over his thighs, grimaces slightly. “It’s okay.”
“My name is Blaine,” the stranger says, and holds out his hand.
“Oh, um, Kurt,” Kurt replies, and shakes Blaine’s hand, which is warm and strong in his own, and firm and large and his fingers wrap around Kurt’s own so beautifully, and - and, he realises, belatedly, that he’s been holding Blaine’s hand for far longer than is appropriate. He lets go and withdraws his own quickly, busies it with his bag instead.
“Can I get you a coffee, Kurt?” Blaine asks, and Kurt blinks at the floor, startled. Cute boys don’t just ask him for coffee. In his sporadic, patchy dating history, he has notoriously been the one doing the asking.
“Uh,” he says, and Blaine dissembles, backs away.
“I’m sorry. You’re not - I shouldn’t assume.”
“No, sorry. Yes.” Kurt reaches out to stop Blaine, his fingers brushing the feathers of the protective shield of his wings as he grabs for his hand. “Please, I’m sorry. I would love to go for coffee with you. But now isn’t good. For me. Can I get your number, and we can arrange sometime when we’re both dry?”
Blaine’s smile is as easy to look at as his face, and it comes quick and unreserved. “I like you, Kurt,” he says, using his name once more, as if he’s trying the shape on his tongue, tasting it, seeing how it fits in his mouth. Satisfied, he reels off his number, his wings half unfurled behind him, excitement vibrating in every bone.
*
True to his word, Kurt texts him once he’s home and dry, curled up on his couch with his boyfriend pillow beside him and a mug of hot tea on the table in front of him. He’s not entirely convinced that the cute boy from the library is genuine, but he wants to know more about him. Wants to know everything about him, really. Wants to learn everything there is to learn and keep those things safe in the locker of his heart. But he can’t give his heart to an idea or a maybe, so he waits for Blaine to text him back.
In the interim, he googles winged people, discards every result that comes back with references to angels, and pours through everything he can find in the time it takes for his phone to flash a message alert at him. The tabs on his computer build up - videos of autopsies, and detailed documentaries about biology and function. He learns that wings are almost without function - the human body lacks the strength for powered flight. With training, soaring or gliding may be possible, but wingspan and training matter. Not everybody is taught how. He learns it’s genetic in nature, usually running in families. He sees the wing nubs on pre-pubescent children, learns that they don’t always materialise. He almost finds himself in tears as he opens accounts from people who found themselves on genetic blockers to stop their wings from growing. When his phone lights up, Kurt is engrossed in an indie movie about a woman whose stepmother has her wings removed, and then lies to her for years about them, as if they had been a dream she’d had once. Kurt doesn’t realise he’s crying until he’s got his face buried in Bruce-the-Pillow’s plaid clothed shoulder and notices that it’s wet.
The jolt of reality is enough for him to realise that his phone is buzzing silently across the table, and that Blaine’s name is bright in the centre of the screen. He pauses his movie, sips his tea, and answers brightly. “Hey,” he says, and then, “Sorry. I was watching a movie.”
Blaine laughs lightly, and Kurt decides he wants to learn how to make that sound happen forever, decides to let his heart gallop way beyond his head. “Let me guess,” he says, and names the movie. Kurt blushes.
“Cliche?” he asks.
“Expected,” Blaine responds. “It’s not like we have a lot of great cinema dedicated to us. At least that one is honest. The screenwriter based it on her life.”
“I just - I didn’t want to make meeting you all about how you’re different. I wanted to know without bogging you down.”
“It’s okay, Kurt,” Blaine says kindly. “I don’t expect you to pretend you can’t see them. You’ve already got most of the guys I’ve been out for coffee with beat.”
“That’s a pretty low bar,” Kurt responds, and Blaine hums his assent. Kurt wonders, for a moment, how Blaine has been treated, and then stops when he realises he’s cycling into imagining Blaine being treated as an object, a curio. As a fascination and not as a person, and - and his wings are fascinating, but they’re not him. Not all of him.
“Kurt?” Blaine says, softly, and Kurt sniffs and stares up at his ceiling for a long minute as he tries to clear the block in his chest.
“I’m here,” he says eventually, and then, “You were serious? About coffee?”
“Why wouldn’t I have been?”
“Because cute boys don’t usually ask a rain-soaked and annoyed Kurt Hummel out on coffee dates, Blaine. I ask them, and we clunk along for six months until they give up trying to get to know me and we go our separate ways.”
It is Blaine’s turn to stay silent for a moment, and then he says, “Kurt Hummel, I’m officially inviting you to come share coffee with me at Starbucks. Does tomorrow work for you?”
Kurt laughs, and it feels good, feels like it shakes the vestiges of unease loose. “Tomorrow? No. But the day after is fine?”
“The day after, then. I can’t make it before 2.”
“2, then,” Kurt says, and it’s that easy. It’s coffee, and it’s a date, and he can hear his heart in his ears when he turns his movie back on.
In the end, the girl is soaring and Kurt is wondering if Blaine ever learned how to do that.
*
Blaine gets biscotti and plain drip coffee, which he adds cinnamon to, and lowers himself into a seat opposite Kurt. Kurt watches in silence as Blaine arranges his wings so that he isn’t sitting on the feathers, or crushing them against his chair when he leans back. “How do you sleep?” he asks, when Blaine seems settled and has started to break up his biscotti. Blaine looks up, startled.
“What?”
“No - I don’t - I meant, when you’re asleep you can’t take so much care.”
“Oh,” Blaine dips his biscotti in his coffee and is silent for a moment. “I sleep mostly on my front. Unless I’m lucky enough to have someone who doesn’t object to a feather blanket being draped over them, and then I-”
Kurt can feel the look on his face, but can’t erase it fast enough for Blaine, who stops himself and blushes. “Sorry,” he says. Kurt shakes his head.
“Don’t be,” he breathes, and takes a sip from his coffee, just to hide behind something.
He’s never considered the potential of feathers in quite this way, though. When he risks looking at Blaine again, Blaine is smiling at him, his eyes sparkling as if he can read Kurt’s mind. “Am I still ahead of those other men?” Kurt says quietly, and Blaine chews his food thoughtfully.
“I’m not naked yet, so I’m going with yes.”
“Yet?”
“I’m hopeful there’ll be a sometime,” he says easily.
This time Kurt does blush, and Blaine grins, and when the conversation resumes, it is easier.
*
It’s on their fifth date that Blaine asks him if he wants to come back to his apartment. Kurt doesn’t think twice, says yes. Yes, he would love to. They’ve been together almost a month, have seen a lot of one another. Blaine has taken Kurt’s hand in his, and kissed him goodbye when they part, but they’ve only managed five actual dates that aren’t merely grabbing a sandwich together before dashing away again. This date has been wonderful, though, and Kurt isn’t ready for the night to end. So yes, he will happily go back to Blaine’s apartment with him, even if it’s just to sit on his couch and watch TV.
They don’t watch TV.
Blaine stands in the middle of his sitting room and takes Kurt’s hand. Behind him, his wings open slightly, the susurration of feathers loud in the silence. Kurt holds his breath, watches Blaine’s face, wants Blaine to tell him what he wants here. His wings continue to fold out, the feathers settling, overlapping, and Blaine says, softly, “You can look, Kurt. Please?”
Kurt feels his breath huff out of him, and he turns his face to Blaine’s wings, to the glossy black of his feathers. His fingers grip Blaine’s, even as Blaine starts to release him.
“I - I’d like for you to touch,” Blaine says. “I don’t want you to be scared. I don’t want you to act like you don’t see them, or have to pretend you don’t see me - them - for me to perfect.”
“But I do think you’re perfect.”
“I’m not, but you’re sweet.”
“I’m not,” Kurt says simply, but steps closer, reaches for Blaine’s left wing, lets his fingers trail over the feathers. They’re soft, cool against his fingertips, so very real now that he feels them properly. He runs the back of his hand over them, his fingers along the strong bones which bear their weight, feels the muscles beneath the feathers and smiles. “Can - could I see how they’re attached?” he breathes, meeting Blaine’s gaze again.
Blaine blanches slightly, his smile flattening for a beat, wings furling slightly, protectively, hiding his back. Kurt pulls his hands back and grips Blaine’s hand, shakes his head. “Or not,” he says quickly, “Not is fine, Blaine. I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m - it’s fine. It’s fine. It’s just -” He shakes his head and releases Kurt’s hand, turns slowly, stretches his wings enough to show the muscles of his back and shoulders. Enough for Kurt to see the scars on his spine and around the base of his wings. Kurt sees how Blaine's clothes fit badly, the cutaways for his wings digging into his muscles, leaving red marks on his skin. He reaches to touch, and Blaine jumps and his wings settle with a snap of finality.
“Do you want me to leave?” Kurt asks quietly, when Blaine doesn’t turn back around again, when he stands with his arms wrapped around himself, staring at the wall.
“No,” Blaine says eventually, his voice full of unwarranted remorse. “Let me make you tea.”
When he’s made tea and they’re settled on his couch, his head pillowed on Kurt’s shoulder as Kurt’s fingers tease the feathers that tickle his leg, Kurt says, “Do all of your clothes cut in across the top of your back like that? Is is restricting you? Hurting you?”
“Not all,” Blaine says, watching the images flick across his TV. “It’s hit and miss. The sizes are standard and our bodies aren’t. Our muscles develop differently, and manufacturers can’t account for every variation of weight and wingspan. I do the best I can with what’s available.”
“I - I could maybe help? I can adjust your seams at least, give you better motion. I -” He pauses when Blaine lifts his head to actually look at him. “I’m racing ahead,” he dissembles, stops touching Blaine’s feathers again and places his hands back in his lap.
“Would you really do that?” Blaine says, “Or I guess - could you?”
“Moving your seams so your clothes aren’t hurting would be the least I could do for you,” Kurt says quietly. “I mean, I could make you clothes that would fit entirely from scratch -”
He doesn’t finish the sentence, because Blaine’s mouth covers his, Blaine’s fingers digging into the sweep of his hair. When he pulls away, Kurt presses his lips together and breathes out slowly through his nose.
“Is that a yes?” he says, and Blaine laughs and bows his head.
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s a yes.”
*
They set a day between them, when they both have a clear Saturday, for Blaine to come to Kurt’s apartment so that Kurt can measure him and make a start adjusting some of his clothes. In the intervening days, Blaine tells him that there is no need to do this, that he’s lived with his clothes since he was eighteen and it doesn’t hurt. He’s okay. Kurt, in turn, tells him that it’s no effort, and that honestly, he can use it as part of his final project.
“No one else is going to have this,” he says, and kisses Blaine firmly before leading them to an empty table in the cafeteria. “No one else is going to be designing clothes that work with wings. So really, this isn’t entirely unselfish. I - oh -” He stops and looks at Blaine, who stares at the table between them and picks at a sandwich he seems suddenly disinclined to eat. “Blaine?” Kurt says softly, reaches for Blaine’s hand, which Blaine withdraws slowly. “Blaine, I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” Blaine says, forces a smile and looks up. Kurt can see the betrayal, though, the hurt that’s clear on Blaine’s expressive face.
“It’s not. I didn’t mean - I was trying not to make it seem like I was being put out. I want to help. And I know I can.”
“It’s fine, Kurt.”
Kurt knows it’s not, but he can’t make Blaine speak.
It’s when Blaine is standing in Kurt’s cramped apartment, Kurt behind him with a measuring tape in his hands and Blaine’s nervous fluttering wings in his face, that Blaine speaks. “It’s just,” he says, wrapping his arms around himself first, and then his wings, until Kurt is forced to stop working for a moment. “I don’t - I’m not a project, right? This isn’t all because of these?”
His wings flutter and then settle back around him. Kurt can see the scars on his back clearly in the light of his work room, the old wounds at the base of his wings, where his feathers meet his skin. He touches them with light, reverent fingers, and Blaine starts, wings unfurling too fast for the small space they’re standing in, sending paper and a mannequin sprawling across the floor. Kurt curses and ducks, and Blaine makes a pained noise as his left wing collides with the wall, feathers bending and breaking against the plaster. He curls them back around himself, examines his damaged feathers, bunches his shoulders together tightly to hide the scars as he does so. Kurt stands slowly, moves to right his dummy and gather his paperwork back onto his work table.
“Sorry,” Blaine says, quietly, and Kurt shakes his head.
“Don’t be. I should have asked.” He squares his paperwork and leaves it, takes his tape measure from around his neck. He knows he should have asked. He has scars of his own that he doesn’t want being poked, not even by Blaine. Not yet. He smiles, and Blaine watches him warily. “You’re not a project. I thought that if you thought it wasn’t putting me out, that it would be easier for you to let me help. That was all I wanted to convey.”
“Did I tell you about the boys I knew when they were growing back?” Blaine asks, wings uncurling from around his body slowly, his shoulders relaxing slightly.
Kurt wants to ask what he means by ‘back’, but he says, “No. Not really.” He starts to measure the dimensions of Blaine’s wings again, how far from the nape of his neck they are, how far from the centre of his spine and from his shoulders, and reaches gently to lower Blaine’s hands to his sides when he moves them once more. “I need you to stand still a second, sweetheart.”
“Pardon?” Blaine glances over his shoulder, and Kurt looks up.
“Sorry?”
“You called me sweetheart,” Blaine says, and his smile is soft, beautiful. Kurt leans in and kisses him, because he can. Because it’s possible.
“You are. So tell me about these boys I accidentally reminded you of, because I don’t want to do it again.”
“It’s noth - it’s not nothing,” he amends, turning back to face the wall. “When I first started dating, I had no experience. I had no idea, no clue, really, just a lot of naivety and a lot of dreams of meeting the right boy right out the gate and a real, palpable need to be liked. I didn’t know how to protect myself from people who wouldn’t really see me as a person. I didn’t know that these were a thing for people. You know?” He ruffles his feathers and lets them fall back slowly, Kurt’s hands brushing strays back into place for him. “So I met this guy. He was cute, nice. Charming and he liked me. Or - or I thought he liked me. He wasn’t even a bad guy. It just turned out, in the end, that I don’t think he ever really saw me. He saw the potential of these. And god, when I was 18, they weren’t even really anything special. I’d only stopped taking my blockers just before I left Ohio. They were only starting to grow back in, hard and painful and featherless for months. He stuck around until the feathers grew and I guess - I guess when it became apparent that I was more than just a sensation against his naked skin, I was too much like hard work. So he left, and he was followed by a few guys who were much the same. More interested in what it’s like to fuck a boy with wings than in what it’s like to know him. And I just - I guess I don’t want that? I don’t want to be a guy with wings. I don’t want to be your thesis project. I want to be your boyfriend, Kurt. Who just happens to have wings. Is that -”
“Shh,” Kurt says, and then repeats. “You’re not a project, Blaine. I love you. You. Not these.” He ghosts his hands over the bones and muscles erupting from Blaine’s shoulder blades, kisses his neck once. Blaine drops his head forward, the knobs of his spine exposing themselves as he does so. Kurt presses his lips to those too.
“Say it again,” Blaine says, and Kurt smiles against his skin, turns him around so he can meet Blaine’s questioning, cloudy hazel eyes.
“I love you,” Kurt says, each word enunciated clearly.
His breath huffs out of him as Blaine wraps his arms around him and hugs him tightly. “I love you too,” he says into Kurt’s neck, and kisses him once to seal it in.
*
It’s sharing Chinese food and childhood stories in Kurt’s kitchen that Blaine begins to share what he means when he talks about his wings ‘growing back’, and where the scars on his back came from. He’s chewing butterfly shrimp, his wings vibrating as pleasure hums through him, and Kurt leans back in his chair to watch as Blaine digs another out of the carton with his chopsticks, throws it in the air and catches it with ease born of practice and skill. He smiles, and he’s still smiling when Blaine’s chin lowers and his eyes meet Kurt’s over the top of the half-consumed containers.
“You’ve never asked,” he says out of nowhere, and Kurt frowns, can feel the way his eyebrows draw together.
“Never asked what?”
“About the scars,” Blaine says simply, putting his chopsticks down and resting his elbows on the edge of the table. Kurt shifts uncomfortably in his chair.
“It’s - I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable. It’s obviously something personal.”
“It’s personal,” Blaine says. “But you’re allowed to ask.”
“Just like that?” Kurt avoids Blaine’s face, picks up his own utensils and transfers a forkful of lo mein to his mouth, chews methodically before swallowing, and then asks the container, “I say, ‘So hey, Blaine, what’s the story with the scars’ and you just tell me.”
Blaine doesn’t answer, and then there’s the rustle of feathers, and the toes of Blaine’s shoes, and a hand taking the box of noodles away. “No,” Blaine says. “But I’m not going to break if you did ask. That’s all.”
Kurt nods and tries to put the offer from his mind.
It’s as he’s cleaning his teeth, though, Blaine’s naked torso visible through the open door of his bedroom, the pink lines around his wings obvious against his summer tanned skin, that curiosity overtakes him, and once they’re both curled in his bed, Blaine head pillowed on his shoulder and his right wing a soft blanket over their bodies, Kurt’s fingers light on his pinion feathers, stroking gently, he says, “If you really want to tell me what happened, I want to know.”
Blaine lifts his head for moment, searches Kurt’s face, and then lowers his cheek to Kurt’s cool skin once more. Against their bodies, his wing shifts as his shoulders bunch and relax, his exhalation loud in the silence. “My dad had them clipped when I was 13 and they were just growing in,” he says, and Kurt hears himself catch his breath. Blaine doesn’t respond for a moment, and then asks, “Do you know how they develop?”
Kurt shakes his head and whispers, “Only a little, just what I read when we met, really. I wanted to get to know you, not what you are.”
“I’m human,” Blaine says. His voice sounds light, amused, and he looks up to meet Kurt’s eyes before linking their hands together and staring at those instead. “Think of these as a really extreme and unusual kind of blue eyes versus brown eyes. That’s it."
"I can do that," Kurt breathes, and Blaine squeezes his fingers before continuing. He breathes in slowly, and exhales once, long and sad.
“How much do you want to know about my family?” he says, and Kurt frowns, looks at the top of Blaine’s head, tries to work out what the right answer is, and can’t determine whether or not there is one.
“Whatever you’re comfortable with?” he hazards, and Blaine laughs, his shoulders shaking slightly.
“So you know that there are signs, when we’re born?” he says. Kurt makes a noncommittal noise. He’s watched videos on YouTube, but what he knows and what’s true aren’t the same. Blaine continues, “We have bone spurs on our backs, small nubs that will become wings when we’re old enough. For some people, that’s all they’ll ever have. The wings don’t grow, and can be hidden. My uncle’s are like that. He won’t use a public changing room, but you’d never know he has anything like these beneath his suit. So my dad knew there was a chance, and didn’t tell my mom. When I came along with these little spurs on my back, my mom had no idea what to make of it, and my dad knew immediately. He’d been lucky with Cooper, my brother, and then there was me.”
Blaine pauses, shifts uncomfortably, his wings flexing, feathers ghosting over Kurt’s stomach and thighs. When he speaks again, his voice is thoughtful, sad but steady, “I think my dad hoped I’d be like his brother, that these would never develop into much, that we could keep them hidden and no one would have to know. But then I turned 13, and puberty came along and changed everything. You know it’s a hormonal change, yeah? So I turned 13, and they started to grow and I - they weren’t even really grown when he had me booked in to a specialist in Illinois and had them clipped and removed.”
“Blaine,” Kurt whispers, his voice breaking. Blaine sounds like he’s reading from a textbook, as if he’s narrating someone else’s life. He glances up again and his face falls as he sees the tears in Kurt’s eyes.
“No, hey. Don’t, I’m okay. Look.” He sits up, crosses his legs and rests his hands in his lap, stretches his wings as far as he comfortably can in Kurt’s small bedroom and offers him a warm smile. The lamp beside Kurt’s bed shines through the fan of feathers, illuminating them, warming them gently. “I’m okay, see? I’m whole. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine. None of that is fine.”
“I don’t think about it much,” Blaine says. “My gramps lost his temper with my dad, told him he had no idea what he’d done. When his wings were taken from him, it was the norm. It was like training left-handed kids to use their right hands. Removing them was expected, and then not having them, taking his gene blockers, it became habit he couldn’t break. When I was born, he’d hoped I could be proud of these. He said that they were as natural as breathing and sleeping and fucking, and removing them was goddamn barbaric. He pretty much disowned my dad, and my dad said he didn’t damn well care. Like this, I’d be okay. The rest of my weird was nothing compared to what people would say if his kid had wings, and I was a minor so what he said went. I came home from hospital trussed and bandaged and in so much pain I thought I might be dying, and every morning for weeks, years, I’d take a pill with my breakfast, and another with my dinner at night, and I’d have a shot into my stomach once every two weeks. For the longest time, I thought I was something hideous, anomalous, that he was right-”
“It’s not just you, though, Blaine.” Kurt pushes himself upright as well, grips his hand hard hard enough that his knuckles crack and Blaine’s wings flutter gently as he winces and peels Kurt’s death grip from his fingers.
“I know,” he says. “I know he wasn’t right. I knew when he sent me away to a private school, so I could be amongst other people like me, other boys like me. We talked, we learned about one another. We shared our stories, and our scars, and made secret pacts with one another to skip our blockers at breakfast. We’d see the ways our bodies changed when we messed with our medication, help dress and bandage and hide the bones regrowing from our bodies. My senior year, I let that happen to me. I went home after graduation with bandages around my wings, and I left for New York as soon as my mom and I could arrange accommodation. I don’t go home much, not unless I can go to my gramps and Mom meets me there.”
Kurt is silent for a long time, and Blaine’s breath is soft in the still between them. Just to have something to do with his hands, Kurt runs them over Blaine’s wings and down ribs, feels the hammer of his heart and the tightness of his muscles that give away his tension. Kurt knows his scars aren’t visible on the outside, knows he keeps them close sometimes, but Blaine should know - should know he’s not alone with his damaged body, should know that he wasn’t alone in being fifteen and broken and different. Kurt says, “When I was 8, my mom died. When I was fifteen, my dad nearly died as well. When I was sixteen, I was bullied to a point where I honestly thought about ending it all. I know I don’t have the outside scars, but I want you to know I understand what it’s like to be different and alone and have no one who understands and I wish I’d known you then, because I think we could have helped one another -”
“Hey, shh,” Blaine whispers, reaches for his face and pulls him close, wraps him up in his wings again, holds him gently as his body shakes, as the tears he so rarely cries stream from his eyes. “Stop, Kurt. Please? You’re here now, and I’m here now. And that’s enough. That’s good.”
Kurt wraps his arms around Blaine, holds him close, his fingers brushing the base of Blaine’s wings, brushing his more visible scars, and Blaine’s body stiffens briefly but he doesn’t pull away, not this time. His hands only tighten against Kurt’s body, his face burrowing into Kurt’s neck, and Kurt breathes out as Blaine’s lips find his skin.
They’re here, now, and maybe Blaine is right. It’s okay.
*
There is, Kurt finds, as their nights together increase, a lot to learn about Blaine’s life and his rituals. Laying on his side, his head resting on his pilllows, he watches Blaine sit naked on the edge of the bed, his wings spread as he pours over his feathers in front of his mirror, grooming and checking them. He feels as if he’s been allowed behind the curtain of Blaine’s privacy like this, quiet and still on a weekend morning. Sleeping with him, eating with him, meeting him for coffee and kissing him goodbye on street corners are nothing compared to the sight of Blaine trusting him enough to let him share his routines and needs. Blaine meets his gaze in the mirror and offers him a smile, which Kurt returns sleepily, and then Blaine resumes his task, his head bent and his wide paddle brush in his hand, plucking stray or dislodged feathers with gentle fingers. Kurt lies silent for a while longer, and then sits up slowly. Blaine’s head rises and he looks over his shoulder.
“Did I wake you?” he asks, his voice soft. and Kurt shakes his head, pushes the sheets off of himself and crawls closer.
“No,” he replies, kneels behind Blaine and runs his hands gently over the feathers closest to Blaine’s back. “Do you do this every day?”
Blaine shakes his head, lowers his brush to his lap, leans back into Kurt’s touch and groans low in his throat. “No,” he says, “I go to a girl to have them done. I can’t reach most of them. I only do them when they itch.” He closes his eyes as Kurt's deft fingers dislodge a feather, which flutters first to the mattress and then to the floor, joining the ones already there. “Keep - keep doing that.”
In the mirror, Kurt can see Blaine’s body loosening, can feel the softening of his muscles as he relaxes, and he strokes the feathers beneath his fingers, repeatedly smoothing them as Blaine hums his contentment. Around Blaine’s feet, Kurt sees the shed feathers gathering, and he slips Blaine’s brush from his fingers. “Is this something you can teach me to do for you?” he asks, and Blaine opens his eyes so quickly that Kurt jerks back slightly and Blaine falls with him, his wings opening slightly as he rights himself.
“Sorry,” Kurt says, handing the brush back. Or trying to, at least. Blaine twists and stares at in his hand, shakes his head once.
“Do you want to?” he says instead, turning to face Kurt. His eyes are wide and full of trust, and Kurt nods uncertainly.
“If it would help.”
Blaine’s smile is a reward in itself. “It’d be cheaper,” he says. “Deb is a friend, but she doesn’t do them for nothing.”
He moves from the edge of the bed to lie on his stomach amidst the rumpled dove grey of the sheets, spreads his wings across the bed so they drape over the edges. The glossy black of his feathers is enticing, and Kurt wants nothing so much as to touch, to stroke. Later, though. For now, he has a job to do, to learn how to do. The morning sunshine picks out the loose feathers, dull and dead amidst the otherwise sleek plumes. Blaine pillows his cheek on his folded arms, exhales low and deep, his whole body sinking into the bed as he does so.
“Use the brush gently,” he says. “You’re only trying to shake the old feathers loose, not pull out good ones.”
In his hands, Kurt examines the brush. It’s wide and smooth, the bristles softs and fine. He runs it over his palm, and smiles when it tickles. When he looks at Blaine, Blaine is watching him. “Try not to split good feathers,” Blaine says quietly, and Kurt tries to ignore the race of his heart. He is a tailor. He has done finer jobs than plucking dead feathers from his boyfriends wings.
No pressure.
Kurt starts at Blaine’s shoulders, smooths the brush over the feathers, uses his fingers to pluck dislodged feathers from the smooth black expanse of muscle and bone. Beneath him, Blaine hums, his eyes closing as he lets Kurt work. Kurt smooths feathers with his fingers, and lets the discarded fluff pile around his knees. Toward the edge of Blaine’s left wing, Kurt finds a run of broken feathers that Blaine hasn’t mentioned, and he touches them gingerly.
“Blaine,” he says, and Blaine opens one eye. “These are damaged.”
“Leave them,” Blaine murmurs, twists onto his side. “Leave them and come here.”
Kurt grins and drops the brush to the bed, crawls beneath Blaine’s wing as he lifts it, and kisses him softly. Blaine’s wing lowers back over him like a blanket, and Blaine rolls him onto his back, covers his body with his own. Around them, his wings form a cocoon, sleek and tactile and delicate over Kurt’s skin where they touch, and Kurt shivers as his thighs part, his knees brushing Blaine’s ribs as his hands find his face.
“Hey Goose, you big stud,” he says, and Blaine bows his head and laughs, actually laughs. Kurt is grinning as he finishes. “Take me to bed or lose me forever.”
Blaine kisses him quiet and fucks him blind.
*
Kurt grows used to life with Blaine, asks him to move in with him on their first anniversary. Blaine says yes, but they should find somewhere bigger. They have combined incomes, they can find something with more space, somewhere he can stretch all of his muscles. Kurt says that his old loft would have been perfect, but that was a long time ago, and Blaine says maybe, maybe not.
It’s not the loft he lived in when he was 18, but it’s similar - vast, exposed, old and industrial. They furnish it slowly, each adding their own elements, their own eclectic mix of tastes and styles. They settle into their rhythms, dancing around one another, and Blaine uses the space afforded to stretch out whenever he can.
When Kurt comes home to an empty apartment with fresh coffee brewed, he learns where to look for Blaine. Blaine has taken to heading up to the roof when the weather is clear, where the space is free and unobserved, where he can stretch his wings out to their fullest extent, where he can feel the wind in his feathers, uninhibited at last, and beautiful with it.
Kurt wraps a cardigan around himself and heads to the roof with hot coffee, finds Blaine standing at the edge of the building, watching the traffic below them with curious eyes.
“Hey,” Kurt calls, coming up behind him, and Blaine glances back, offers his easy, affectionate smile and turns to greet Kurt with a kiss.
“Hey,” he says. Around them, his wings spread and fold, and he draws Kurt close, wraps his arms around him. Kurt returns the hug with one arm and pulls back slowly, checks Blaine’s wings for him. He knows what he does up here, has seen the changes in his muscles, in the strength of his body when he’s naked and all Kurt’s.
“Is today the day?” he says, glancing over the edge of their building.
“No,” he says, takes Kurt’s coffee from him and sips it before handing it back with a grin. “But maybe soon.”
Kurt nods his head and looks down at the street below them. “I know you can do it,” he says, and leans into Blaine as Blaine leans into him.
“Marry me,” he says, and Kurt laughs and glances at him, sees only sincerity in Blaine’s bright gaze.
“Okay,” he replies, his laughter dying in his throat. “Yeah,” he says. “Yes.”
“Trust me,” Blaine says, softer now, pulling Kurt into a hug, which Kurt returns, sure and strong and never letting go.
“With my life,” he says, and Blaine kisses him as he tips them both over the edge, gripping Kurt tight as they fall, as his wings snap open and catch them, as they ride the air vents to the sidewalk below them.
“I promise,” he says into Kurt’s hair. “To always be there when you fall, Kurt.”
Kurt finds his breath and looks up at the top of the roof, and back at Blaine. “I love you,” he says. “If you ever do that again, I will divorce you.”
Blaine’s laughter is rich and loud as he tugs his key from his pants and lets them both back inside.
At fifteen, Kurt couldn’t have imagined Blaine. At 22, he’s glad he doesn’t have to.